Paper detail

Consequences of Dale's law on the stability-complexity relationship of random neural networks

In the study of randomly connected neural network dynamics there is a phase transition from a `simple' state with few equilibria to a `complex' state characterised by the number of equilibria growing exponentially with the neuron population. Such phase transitions are often used to describe pathological brain state transitions observed in neurological diseases such as epilepsy. In this paper we investigate how more realistic heterogeneous network structures affect these phase transitions using techniques from random matrix theory. Specifically, we parameterise the network structure according to Dale's Law and use the Kac-Rice formalism to compute the change in the number of equilibria when a phase transition occurs. We also examine the condition where the network is not balanced between excitation and inhibition causing outliers to appear in the eigenspectrum. This enables us to compute the effects of different heterogeneous network connectivities on brain state transitions, which can provide new insights into pathological brain dynamics.